Interesante artículo sueco traducido al inglés sobre como va la economía rusa. Una nota.... Rusia va a revivir los viejísimos Moskovich cuando Renault cierre. CUÉNTAME COMO PASÓ PERO EMPEZANDO POR EL FINAL Y VERSIÓN VODKA VLADIMIR DE MIERDA.
https://www.svd.se/a/k6oA0A/experter-i-host-borjar-sanktionerna-mot-ryssland-bita
La economía Rusa estrangulada. "Un Knockout total"
Russia's energy exports draw in billions and the grocery stores' shelves are full. But it's calm before the storm. By this autumn, the western world's export embargo will force large parts of the economy to its knees, experts say.
Tomas Lundin
Published 2022-06-12
In April, French Renault withdrew from Russia, wrote off 2.2 billion euros and sold its factory in southern Moscow for a ruble to the municipality. Mayor Sergei Sobjanin now plans to use the factory to revive the legendary Soviet car Moskvich that went to the grave in 2001, a lead-heavy loyalist known to have problems with rust
- It is just one of many examples of how Russia is trying to meet the sanctions from the US and the EU which means that Russia is disconnected from the world economy and that all technological development is stopped, says Russia expert Anders Åslund who in the 1990s was economic adviser to Boris Yeltsin's government.
In the car industry, virtually all foreign manufacturers have left the country and all but two car factories are now at a standstill. In May, sales of passenger cars were 83 percent lower than last year.
How hard it hits society shows the Russian manufacturer Avtotor's decision the other day to offer the employees in Kalingrad free garden plots to grow vegetables when the ties in the factory are at a standstill. Until the sanctions, BMW's luxury city jeep X7 was manufactured here.
Another consequence is that safety and environmental requirements are lowered in order to be able to speed up domestic production. This applies in particular to Avtovaz, which manufactures Lada. The company was nationalized in May when the majority owner Renault left Russia in a hurry. The models that will now roll off the belts only meet the emission standard euro 2 and, according to media reports, will no longer have ABS, airbags or electric window lifts. 🚑
The car industry is just one of many examples. Growing problems have also arisen in the manufacture of everything from coat buttons to paper, hygiene items and sausages when chemical raw materials and other necessary components can no longer be imported, either because they are on Western sanctions lists or because foreign manufacturers shun everything that has to do with Russia. .
Among the most critical components that are missing are semiconductors, which are no longer supplied by either American Intel and Qualcomm, Korean Samsung or Taiwanese TSMC. It strikes brutally at the entire Russian engineering industry, but also at the aerospace industry, the railway industry and the defense industry.
- Without the import of semiconductors, Russia will not be able to produce modern cars, tanks or missiles but will have to go back to old Soviet technology, says economics professor Anders Åslund and points out that in Russia there are no alternatives to the big foreign manufacturers.
Russia does have several semiconductor manufacturers, including JSC Mikron, MCST and Baikal Electronics. But their products are not even considered to be close to the quality and capacity that is standard today.
Without semiconductors and other Western technology, the Russian aviation industry will have to scrap large parts of its fleet.
In a worst-case scenario, half of the aircraft will have to be slaughtered to secure spare parts needed for the remaining half to fly, says Vasily Astrov, Russia expert and senior economist at the Vienna Institute for International Economic Studies.
Part of Russia's problem is the lack of innovative, private companies capable of rapidly developing their own Russian products. Successful entrepreneurs such as Pavel Durov, the founder of the messaging service Telegram and Vk, which is Russia's largest social network, have gone into exile or been forced to sell to regime-loyal Russian oligarchs.
- Vladimir Putin is only interested in big companies that he can control. He does not care about small businesses with new, fresh ideas, says Anders Åslund.
Since the sanctions following the invasion of the Crimean peninsula in 2014, Putin has been talking about making the Russian economy more robust and more independent of the world economy. But in practice not much has happened. On paper, however, a number of sub-goals have been achieved. Among other things, Russia today has a 100% national supply of sugar.
- But what is missing are factories for packaging and quality control that are needed to get everything from food to medicines on the market, says Russia expert Vasily Astrov.
The dependence - and the vulnerability - becomes clear when more and more foreign companies now openly break with Russia. According to a compilation of the Yale School of Management, which is continuously updated, almost 1,000 companies have left Russia altogether or severely limited their activities there. These are everything from Swedish SKF to the Norwegian grocery store Orkla or the German store chain Rewe.
Heavily weighs that German Siemens has also left. This means that the future of the high-speed Sapsan and regional trains is uncertain, as is the planned modernization of the railway network and the upgrade of locomotives and freight wagons.
In the telecom industry, Ericsson and Nokia were early in stopping deliveries and withdrawing completely from Russia. Since then, Chinese Huawei has also hooked on and stopped all new orders. Indian Tata Steel, which is one of the world's leading steel producers and imports large quantities of Russian coal, does not want to do business with Russia either.
The crucial sanctions against the Russian energy sector, in particular the US halt to components and technology transfer to oil and gas extraction, were decided in May. This applies, for example, to rigs for deep-sea drilling of more than 500 meters or in Arctic regions, as well as equipment for shale gas extraction. It directly affects Russia's largest source of income.
In addition, there is a ban on insuring oil tankers, which according to commodity strategist Helima Croft at RBC Capital Markets are expected to have an even greater effect.
"Once the sanctions take effect, every European tanker with Russian oil will be shut down from not only Europe and the UK but also other leading markets such as China and India," she told Northern public radio recently.
### - It's nothing more than a knockout.
On another level lies perhaps the most spectacular and most symbolic retreat: the sale of McDonald's Russian operations.
It was in January 1990, just weeks after the fall of the wall, that McDonald's opened its first branch in Moscow. The queues were long on Pushkin Square. It took three hours to reach the long-awaited burgers - a symbol of the lifestyle of the West and the freedom that would come only two years later when the Soviet Union went up in smoke.
The business is now being taken over by the Siberian businessman Alexander Govor, who plans to continue the production and sale of burgers under a not yet announced Russian name.
In the wake of the sanctions - and in many cases the voluntary boycott of Russia - the Russian economy is expected to slow sharply this year. The International Monetary Fund (IMF) expects a fall in GDP of 8.5 percent, while Russia's central bank expects a fall of 9.2 percent and several independent Russian economists predict a fall of 12-15 percent and real wages that fall by more than 10 percent.
There is no shortage of goods in grocery stores and retailers. But everything from fruit to tampons is becoming more expensive. Inflation is expected to rise to 18–23 percent this year, according to the Russian central bank. But according to researchers, it is difficult to assess the situation because the authorities have limited the publication of statistics concerning, for example, foreign trade or industrial production.
What is clear, however, is that Russian energy exports are pulling in hundreds of billions of dollars. Rystad Energy estimates that oil sales this year will increase Russian tax revenues by $ 180 billion, 45 percent more than last year. Another 80 billion comes from gas sales.
This is despite generous discounts to China and India as well as sharply declining production and Russia's demand for payment in rubles, which is contrary to Western sanctions.
- The problem is that Russia has billions but does not have many opportunities to buy something for the money, says Anders Åslund and dismisses the criticism that Western imports of gas and oil feed the Russian war machinery as nonsense.
In the longer term, Russia will, according to Anders Åslund, remain isolated and cut off from modern technology.
- The trend is towards Russia becoming like North Korea. Not exactly so. But in that direction.
Vasili Astrov does not believe that Russia will be completely isolated.
- One should not forget that Russia not only has enemies in the world but can pursue trade and technology exchange with everything from China, India and Turkey to large parts of the emerging economies.
In the long run, this means that Russia will be completely dependent on China in the first place. At the same time, the clock is turning back and the Russian economy is largely returning to the old Soviet model.
